1 Pedro 4.1-6
Licentiousness (aselgeia) is living without any regard for moral restraint, especially in giving oneself over to acts of sexual immorality or acts of physical violence (the same word is used in Rom. 13:13; Gal. 5:19; Eph. 4:19; 2 Pet. 2:7 [of Sodom]; 2:18; Philo, Moses 1.305). Passions (epithymia) are sinful human desires which can be allowed to exert strong influence on one’s behaviour (see note at 1:14). Drunkenness (oinophlygia) is also characteristic of a life bent on following physical desires, as are revels (kōmos; banquets and feasts given to wild immorality) and carousing (potos; drinking parties or drinking bouts). The expression lawless idolatry is actually plural (athemitoi eidōlolatriai), meaning ‘lawless acts of idol worship’. The word lawless cannot mean ‘against God’s law’, for all idol worship is that. Lawless here must rather mean ‘against the civil laws’—implying particularly evil kinds of idol worship which involved or incited people to kinds of immorality even forbidden by the laws of human governments. This suggests that sensual living is often connected with idol worship and the demonic forces behind those idols which incite people to yet greater sin (cf. 1 Cor. 10:20, where, in a discussion of idol worship which uses this same word, eidōlolatreia, Paul says ‘what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God’).